Most of XSI’s layout can be rearranged like blocks of Lego(tm), and parts of the interface can be changed or moved.

With the RenderManager panel I got fed up changing it every time I opened it. I felt like I was changing the width of the panels all the time.
Time to go in and change some code ;-)

Note: This was written with Softimage 2010 in mind, small changes in newer versions might have the linenumbers changed. The settings will be the same.

The interface is getting more and more XML’d (not a word I guess…) and so is the Render Manager window.
First of all, it can be found in the Addons\RenderManager\Application\views\ folder of the Softimage installation.

Caution: Be sure to make a copy of the file before editing. It’s always better to be save than sorry.

Editing the code:

Open it up with a proper text editor (no I don’t mean notepad) and you’ll see an bunch of XML code. So, what to change…..
Most of the stuff you want is in the first 9 lines of code:

-Code line 3 will define the default width and height for the RM
-Code line 4 will define the location (and size) of the RM.
It will read from the left top corner, so in this case 107 px. from the left and 47 px. from the top and the RM will be 950x720px wide and high.
-Code line 9 will define the layout itself in the width. In this case the first column will be 250px. wide, the other two 350px. each. Making it 950px. See the connection??

(The * in the original setup means that it will fill the width, like a html frame)
Now if you save this and reopen the RM, it will not behave as you expected, there’s still one more line of code to change as this is a Relational View or RV.

Find the following lines of code (line 65-67):

X — — — — —

sub RV_Init( in_rv)
‘### open at the optimal size950,720

X — — — — —

You’ll have to change the size here as well to the ones stated in the previous values.

Save and reopen the RM, for once there’s no need to restart XSI at this point. The size and location will now be as you want it to be.
That’s all to it ;-)

Note: This was published on my blog a while ago. But as the blog is going the way of the Dodo soon, I wanted to preserve it here ;)

the normal workflow is that you save the layout you're using and it will save the last sizes of all the floating window you've opened in that session (even if they are not opened when you save it). editing the xml files work, but it will be overridden by layout settings, if they are there (default view size is also saved in layout files)

luceric wrote:the normal workflow is that you save the layout you're using and it will save the last sizes of all the floating window you've opened in that session (even if they are not opened when you save it). editing the xml files work, but it will be overridden by layout settings, if they are there (default view size is also saved in layout files)

Well... up till today this isn't happening for me. So that's why I started to look into this.
Maybe this is fixed in 2012+, but afaik it's still happening for me.